This might sound a little sad but for a few years now I’ve been looking for this information and haven’t really been able to find it and I’d be very appreciative if anyone could help.

I remember there was a discussion here once about this but can’t recall the outcome. I usually vote Greens until the last election and this election would like to register as strong a vote as possible for Labor (to get rid of Howard).

I would think I should vote Labor in both the house and senate but in regards to the 2PP system would it make more sense to vote Labor/Greens to get more bang for my buck or would Labor/Labor be the path I most desire?

David, on the decisions about whom to preference last, I had a chat to Andrew Bartlett the other night at a politics in the pub thing and he mentioned that he’d met one of the crazies running after the preferences were lodged and that it’s very hard to pick between them. We’ve got the LaRouche-ites running in Brisbane, and their candidate turned up at the forum the other night. See here for a summary:

So I had to decide what order at the bottom of my HoR ballot paper to put the Libs, FF, One Nation and the CEC. I probably wouldn’t have given the Socialist Alliance a preference either if I’d had the freedom not to – just done a 1, 2, 3 with Labor, the Greens and the Democrats (not necessarily in that order, mind! though it might be the way I voted…)

I really do like optional preferential, though I’m aware of the arguments against it.

So I had to decide what order at the bottom of my HoR ballot paper to put the Libs, FF, One Nation and the CEC

In NSW, it looks like the easiest thing to do is to take the LDP senate ticket and reverse it. They’ve got all the nutjobs (themselves included) in nice order without me having to do anything – except the liberals would then be far too high. Might put the liberals last, then follow the LDP paper in reverse, although it’s going to take a bit of research to work out exactly what the implications might be. This is important to me – being in Tony Windsors seat means my primary vote means very little.

The wonder of the preferential system is that you can vote 1 Grn 2 ALP in both houses and it has exactly the same impact in booting out Howard.

In the lower house, your vote gets passed on to the ALP at full value. So, you are absolutely booting out Howard, but you are also telling the ALP that you prefer the Greens’ policies. [And, you are helping the Greens by boosting our funding – we get $2 or so for every first preference vote, and zero for second prefs…] Have no fear that, by not giving Labor your first preference vote, you are in any way endangering the likelihood that Labor will win the election. As long as you put them above the Libs, they will get your full value vote.

In the Senate, if you vote 1 Grn 2 ALP, your vote for the ALP is worth slightly less than your vote for the Greens – it is passed down the list at a reduced value. Nevertheless, if you vote that way, you can be pretty close to 100% confident that your vote will go to elect either a Green or a Labor Senator.

As a party member of Socialist Alliance, I’ll be voting 1, Alex Bainbridge, 2 to whatever to the greens, then the rest of SA, then the ALP, then Democrats. All the Conservative parties, religious nutters etc will go last. I know SA has little or no chance of a Senate seat, so its important to get the Greens back in the Senate. If the Coalition still controls the Senate it will be 1975 all over again. No matter what one’s political allegiance is, that can only be disatrous for the country.

I like how the Fishing Party is featured so highly by the Climate Change Coalition, especially in regard to environmentalist parties. I only know of the Fishing Party through their campiagn literature, which has always been anti-environmentalist. Is politics so terrible in this country that a one issue party can lose it’s soul on that issue in 6 months.

I also like the preferences to whackos paid by the LDP. Liberty to shoot, but not liberty for participating in or viewing consensual sex. Glad their priorities for freedom are good!

“If the Coalition still controls the Senate it will be 1975 all over again. No matter what one’s political allegiance is, that can only be disatrous for the country.”

Paul, will you quit it with the worry-wart routine already! Come June, Tin-Tin will have been PM for six months, Greens will have BoP in the Senate and El Rodente’s legacy will be a minor historical speedbump.
Under the current political circumstances in Oz, it’s the best result pinkos like us could hope for.
There’s even a chance that a Green could be elected in the ACT and take a senate seat in the first parliament after Nov 24, nullifying the Harridine-like clout of FF’s Steve Fielding who has another term to sit.
If the Coal. tried to nix landslide “mandated” ALP legislation in the senate before June, thereby providing a double diss. trigger and Rudd pulls it, then many more Minors will have a chance of being elected on “half” quotas, a prospect that is anathema to the interests of the Big Two.

I also like the preferences to whackos paid by the LDP. Liberty to shoot, but not liberty for participating in or viewing consensual sex. Glad their priorities for freedom are good!

I have to admit I can’t work them out. Get into any kind of discussion with half of them and it turns out they are very, very socially conservative. It seems that liberty only comes with a deep-seated kind of moral certitude: free markets apparently only work really, really well when everybody is buttoned down. Freedom isn’t just another word for nothing left to lose, it’s only the freedom to behave in a very narrow set of freedoms (largely economic). In short, they are hilarious.

That the LDP ticket preferences every odd-bod, nutjob and weird single issue party before the majors might just be tiny party politics, but then again, to me it just reinforces the view that the party is basically a honeypot for the insane. I can’t decide whether to put them or the CEC last, may have to take some dice with me.

The Greens are last on six parties’ tickets in Qld and I am the last Greens candidate so I get numbered 65th out of 65 candidates more often than anyone else. I think it is fair to say that by some measures I am the most disliked man in Qld politics. :^)

On the Socialist Alliance preferences for the Senate the Fishing Party is described as a Right wing single issue party.
The Liberty and Democracy Party are preferenced after the Liberals and Nationals so they must be pretty bad.
Whatever some of you may think about Socialist Alliance, when it comes to working out their preference list for the Senate and identifying far right parties to put at the very bottom of the ticket they know the enemy, believe me.

Enemy Combatant,
Thanks again for your re-assurance. I know the left are going to win (and as an old Labor Party man for years before I discovered SA, I still like to think of the ALP as a left wing party, and am delighted the party has people like Gillard and Garrett despite my criticisms of Garrett for his lack of political nous in an election campaign). Its just I can’t quite bring myself to believe it till election night.
I just want to be rid of this evil Government and that evil man, John Winston Howard,SO MUCH, as do we all.

I have to admit I can’t work them out. Get into any kind of discussion with half of them [LDP] and it turns out they are very, very socially conservative.

I find it strange that you think that, Richard. 4 LDP candidates and 3 supporters spent Friday and Saturday putting up posters around Wentworth which state “Gay marriage – your choice, not the government’s”.
Whatever you think of the LDP, we’re not conservatives and are happy to campaign for the rights of same-sex couples.

In the HoR, the LDP preferencing strategy is to put the sitting member last. So we’re preferencing Labour ahead of the Libs in 30 seats and the Libs ahead of Labour in 15. There are split tickets in two electorates.